Tri-State house hunting: NBA star edition

Less than a month after Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving shocked the National Basketball Association world by signing $305 million worth of contracts with the Brooklyn Nets, the two superstars are in the market for some Tri-State real estate.

NJ.com, citing VillageGreenNJ.com, noted earlier this month that Irving, who grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, has relocated to his hometown instead of the nearby South Orange, as some other outlets had mistakenly reported. Several local realtors confirmed Irving’s purchase of West Orange home to VillageGreenNJ, although an exact address for the former No. 1 NBA draft pick was not given.

The Real Deal rolled up its sleeves and scrolled through West Orange home sales records for the past few months, but no recent residential trades revealed a readily identifiable hoops-inclined buyer.

Those records did show that Irving’s father, Drederick Irving, paid $650,000 in September 2018 to buy a single-family home on Walker Road. Drederick Irving reportedly still lives on Ridgeview Avenue in West Orange, his son’s childhood home, and where Irving surprised his dad with a renovation in 2017. (Irving was born in Melbourne, Australia, where his father once played professional basketball.)

Irving, who was traded by the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Boston Celtics in 2017, sold a home in the Cleveland suburb of Westlake last fall for $755,000 — a steep discount from the $1.7 million he initially sought for the property. Irving’s recent acquisition in Northern New Jersey comes as other notable athletic figures, such as former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms and Australian soccer star Tim Cahill, have sought to sell their homes in the region.

As for Durant, Irving’s new Nets teammate is currently recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered during the NBA Finals. Having unloaded his Malibu beach house for $12.2 million in June two months after listing the property for $13.5 million, Durant might consider shacking up again on the East End of Long Island.

The Independent reported last week that Durant could have his eye on returning to the Hamptons, where he paid $100,000 in the summer of 2016 for a 10-day rental at 189 Further Lane in East Hampton. That five-bedroom home, formerly owned by interior designer Scott Sanders and his partner Peter Wilson, ultimately sold late last year for $13.6 million, having initially been listed at $21.5 million in 2014.

Sotheby’s International Realty’s Patricia Wadzinski, who had the exclusive listing for that home and helped facilitate Durant’s Hamptons summer rental three years ago, declined to discuss whether the Washington, D.C., native might return to the East End’s luxury scene when contacted by the Independent.

Durant and Irving will be in good real estate company with their new NBA franchise.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov owns a controlling stake in the Nets, which he bought in 2009, and the Barclays Center, the team’s 17,700-seat home court. In 2017, Prokhorov moved the Nets’ training facility to a 70,000-square-foot space in Industry City.

Joseph Tsai, a New York lawyer and co-founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, owns a 49 percent stake in the Nets and is reportedly in the process of potentially acquiring some of the team’s real estate assets.